This document discusses leveraging learning technologies to support Indigenous postgraduate students. It provides data on the low numbers of Indigenous higher degree research students and their slightly lower retention rates compared to non-Indigenous students. Barriers they face include issues with cultural safety, supervision and balancing family/community responsibilities. Enablers include family/community support and opportunities to give back. The document suggests learning management systems could help by incorporating Indigenous holistic pedagogies focusing on community and relationships rather than individual tasks. This may help form online communities of practice to better support Indigenous higher degree students.

1. Leveraging learning
technologies to support
Indigenous
postgraduate students
Professor Adrian Miller
Pro Vice Chancellor Indigenous Leadership
Charles Darwin University

2. 2
In this talk …
- Acknowledgement
- Look at HDR university data
- Some studies
- Possible way forward

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Indigenous Australian HDR Students
• Indigenous students made up 1.1% of HDR students at university and 0.8% of all HDR completions
in 2010
• Indigenous HDR student retention rates are slightly lower compared to non-Indigenous students
• 80.1% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HDR students who were studying in 2009 continued
to be enrolled at university in 2010, compared to 83.9% of non-Indigenous students (Behrendt et
al 2012)

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Share of applications by Indigenous status and type
of university, 2012
(Charles Darwin University, James Cook University, Griffith University, La Trobe University, Flinders University,
Murdoc University, Western Sydney University*)

5. 55
Commencing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
HDR Students by Year and IRU Member

6. 66
Enrolled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HDR
Students by Year and IRU Member

7. 77
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HDR
Completions by Year and IRU Member

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Where are Indigenous HDR Students likely to come
from?
Discipline All commencing
students (%)
All Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander commencing
students (%)
Society and Culture 3,787 (32.07%) 1,746 (32.44%)
Health 2,344 (19.9%) 1,055 (19.6%)
Education 2,075 (17.6%) 803 (14.9%)
Management & Commerce 1,315 (11.1%) 570 (10.6%)
Creative Arts 821 (7%) 363 (7.3%)
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in certain discipline areas in 2011
Note which discipline areas are not listed

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Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) Review –
Recommendation 6
• The Government should institute
increased weighting for Indigenous HDR
completions in the Research Block
Grants formulae, and flexibility in
scholarship guidelines to allow for
higher value stipends and real wage
fellowships to further encourage
Indigenous participation in HDR
training.

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Indigenous HDR Candidates as a proportion of all domestic HDR
commencements and completions

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Percentage of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people
undertaking HDR training in 2014, as a percentage of the total
Indigenous and Non-Indigenous population in 2011

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Quality
• “no correlation between Indigenous student commencement
numbers and Indigenous student completion rates”
(Pechenkina, Kowal and Paradies, 2011).

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Systematic Review – Submitted Manuscript
• support mechanisms for the attraction, retention and completion of
HDR students (Behrendt et al. 2012; Elston et al. 2013; Trudgett
2009; 2013).
• supervision of Indigenous HDR students as a key strategy of support
(Day 2007; Harrison et al. 2015; Laycock et al. 2009; Trudgett 2011;
2014).
• academic (Schofield et al. 2013; Barney 2013) and non-academic
barriers (Chirgwin 2014) to completion.

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Barriers to complete – Submitted Manuscript
• Continuing confidence issues
• Difficulties of HDR studies
• Time commitments to family/community
• Issues with cultural safety
• Ongoing issues with inadequate supervision
• Too many other HDR commitments

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Enablers to Complete – Submitted Manuscript
• Other research opportunities
• Giving back to community
• Family and community support
• Personal growth
• Financial support
• University recognition of needs
• Cultural supervision/examination
• Students’ own capabilities

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Other Barriers to Success
• Birth of a baby
• A partner or family member who fails to understand the PhD journey
• Divorce
• Family responsibilities
• Community responsibilities
• Financial needs

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Barriers to Success cont.
• Lack or commitment and/or motivation
• Irretrievable breakdown between student and supervisor
• Clash of personality between student and supervisor
• Loneliness (of the journey)
• Substandard perquisites
• Unrealistic expectations as to what a PhD entails

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Indigenous HDR and LMS’s
Issues facing Indigenous
HDR success
(Trudgett 2014)
Cultural inclusivity in
Learning Management
Systems
(Dreamson et al 2017)
Relationships
Can LMS’s like Blackboard
mitigate enablers for
success for Indigenous HDR
students?
Acknowledgement Individually heterogeneous
vs collectively
homogeneous approaches
Community involvement Self-focused vs
community-driven
pedagogy
Processes and Protocols Task-oriented vs relational
learning

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Indigenous holistic pedagogies – Communities of Practice
• metaphysical strength to be the ontological foundation for cultural inclusivity.
• Indigenous holistic pedagogies refer to facilitating interpersonal communication
and collaboration in learning in terms of community-links (Yunkaporta, 2010)
that undermine egocentric, task-focused and grade oriented learning (Gibson,
1993).
• In Indigenous cultures, communities do not refer to local institutions or
neighbourhoods, but a collectivistic consciousness that is a shared belief of
responsiveness and connectedness to the collective whole (Dumont, 2005).
• In this sense, community is always prioritised over individual pursuits, which
makes Indigenous pedagogy distinctive from Western pedagogy (Christie, 2007).

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Knowledge Systems – Acknowledging and supporting
• In Western education systems, knowledge construction means that individual students’ capabilities
of critical, creative and analytical thinking, and problem-solving are applied in the natural world
(Rasmussen, Sherman, & Baydala, 2004).
• In Indigenous social practices of relatedness, on the other hand, such distinctions are only effective
when each capability is aligned with community-links.
• Yunkaporta (2010) interprets its pedagogical meaning:
‘This way of learning draws together the research describing Aboriginal pedagogy as group-
oriented, localised and connected to real-life purposes and contexts’.
• This means that the Indigenous concept of community needs to be understood as the ontological
foundation of holistic pedagogies rather than one of pedagogical strategies, in which community as
the whole of social relations builds individuals to be its agents as they are always part of it.

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Just a thought …
LMS
(Blackboard)
Indigenous
Pedagogies
Indigenous
HDR
Cohorts
Communit-
ies of
Practice
Social
Construct-
ivism

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Barriers and enablers seem consistent with all HDR students
•So what’s the difference?